Five Budget Commanders You Need To Try! - Enemy Colors

Benjamin Levin • March 22, 2025

Budget
Baba Lysaga, Night Witch
 | Illustrated by Slawomir Maniak
Neera, Wild Mage
| Illustrated by Pauline Voss

Hey, nerds! In this week's article, I wanted to showcase five budget commanders you should check out. I'll include some key cards you should consider if you're building these commanders. I'll be covering the enemy colors in this week's article, so Orzhov, Izzet, Golgari, Boros, and Simic. If you're looking for the other commanders, check out my previous article. 

With all of the explanations out of the way, let's get into it! 

Felisa, Fang of Silverquill

I recently built Cleopatra, Exiled Pharaoh

, which is an absolute blast to play, and Felisa seems like the Orzhov version of that commander. You just need to put a bunch of counters on your creatures, sacrifice them, and then make a million 2/1 flying tokens. If you have a Cathars' Crusade
 in play, I'm not going to figure out that math, but you end up making many tokens. Felisa doesn't just care about +1/+1 counters, either, so cards like Luminous Broodmoth
 and Black Sun's Zenith
 are powerhouses here. Bringing back the creatures you sacrifice or recovering instantly from a board wipe. 

Key cards to include: Marketback Walker

, Reluctant Role Model
, Luminous Broodmoth
, Shadewing Laureate
, Black Sun's Zenith
, and Battle of Hoover Dam

Neera, Wild Mage

Neera is the embodiment of a wild mage sorcerer from D&D, and when a budget commander lets you cheat on spells, it's incredibly powerful. Yes, this effect is traditionally random, we can set up the top of our library with cards like Brainstorm

, Ponder
, or Preordain
. This effect can trigger on other players' turns. Imagine turning a Shock
 into a blocker like Etali, Primal Storm
 or Hullbreaker Horror
. I've even been thinking about building a Dragon pile deck with her with all of the cool new Daragons from Tarkir: Dragonstorm.

You can embrace randomness by shuffling in random Dragons and seeing what you might find. I'm not sure how practical it would be, but I've even thought about shuffling in something like 52 random cards each game. I'd keep my mana base and ramp package the same, so the deck can still function. 

Key cards to include: Ovika, Enigma Goliath

, Brainstorm
, Serum Visions
, Consider
, Hullbreaker Horror
, and Swarm Intelligence
.

Baba Lysaga, Night Witch

I was convinced to play Baba thanks to Joey over at EDHREC; how he talked about the deck and the commander intrigued me, so I whipped up a deck using cards I owned, most of which were budget at the time. I then proceeded to quickly stomp the heck out of my playgroup for a few games. The card advantage and damage Baba provides can not be understated, and you might think there is only one way to build her, but I've found there are several approaches you can take. The first is leaning hard into her ability with cards like Instill Energy

, Nature's Chosen
, and Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler
 allowing you to untap her multiple times.

The other option, which is what I did, was playing her as a lands commander. You can sacrifice lands for her ability, and because you're drawing so many cards, taking full advantage of additional land drops is easy. 

Key cards to include: Mishra's Factory

, Mishra's Foundry
, Liquimetal Coating
, Instill Energy
, Genju of the Fens
, and Genju of the Cedars
.

The Jolly Balloon Man

I have a friend named Garrett. Garrett is one of those brewers who either creates the most boring Simic piles with zero win conditions or masterpieces like his The Jolly Balloon Man

deck. His deck showed me the true power of this commander, even on a budget. Using his list as inspiration, you could easily cut some of the expensive spells and still have an incredibly powerful deck. Copying Combat Celebrant
 can give you near infinite combats; if you have Ashnod's Altar
 in play, it is infinite combats. Even if you don't build the deck with combos in mind, you can still get great value from cards like Sun Titan
, White Plume Adventurer
, and Spirited Companion
. 

Key cards to include: Village Bell-Ringer

, Zealous Conscripts
, Marvin, Murderous Mimic
, Karmic Guide
, Agrus Kos, Eternal Soldier
, and Industrial Advancement
.

Verazol, the Split Current

As for Simic commanders, I wasn't sure what to put on this list. Obviously Tatyova, Benthic Druid

is powerful and can be built on a budget, but I wanted something more interesting than the usual Simic goodstuff commander, so let's kick those boring commanders to the curb and play some kicker. Kicker cards are pretty cheap: the most expensive Simic kicker card is Joraga Warcaller
, which we aren't even playing. Instead, we can copy cards like Maddening Cacophony
 to have people mill three-quarters of their library. Or get a ton of tokens with something like Wolfbriar Elemental
. Plus, Verazol dodges commander tax. Well, sort of. Because it cares how much mana was spent to cast it, if you pay four mana after it was removed once, you get four counters. 

Key cards to include: Grow from the Ashes

, Saproling Infestation
, Simic Ascendancy
, Hydra's Growth
, Lullmage's Familiar
, and Forgotten Ancient
. 

And that wraps up five enemy-colored commanders you should try! Make sure to tune in to my next article, where I fun rank all of the new commanders from Tarkir: Dragonstorm. I'll have a poll at the end of the article for what deck tech I'll do next. I'd love to hear what budget commanders you love to play and why down below. Also, make sure to check out my previous articles. I have deck techs, fun rankings and a whole lot more.

Alrighty, nerds, I'll see you in the next one.

Benjamin Levin

Benjamin Levin

Ben has been playing Magic since 2012 and started creating Magic the Gathering content in October of 2022 on YouTube under the name BathroomBrewsMTG (YouTube.com/@BRBMTG). Primarily focusing on budget EDH content. When he isn't thinking or talking about MTG, he is usually playing video games, spending time with his wife or playing with his two cats. You can find him on Twitter @BathroomMTG.